PETITIONER: BIHAR SCHOOL EXAMINATION BOARD Vs. RESPONDENT: SUBHAS CHANDRA SINHA, & ORS. DATE OF JUDGMENT: 10/03/1970 BENCH: HIDAYATULLAH, M. (CJ) BENCH: HIDAYATULLAH, M. (CJ) RAY, A.N. DUA, I.D. CITATION: 1970 AIR 1269 1970 SCR (3) 963 1970 SCC (1) 648 CITATOR INFO : R 1978 SC 851 (58,69) ACT: Natural Justice-Evidence of unfair means at examination at a particular centre apparent-Cancellation of examination at the centre Whether notice to examinees necessary. Bihar School Examination Board Act (Bihar Act 7 of 1952) s. 9 (3) Scope of. HEADNOTE: Candidates at the Secondary School Examination held in March 1969, appeared at various centers. The results at all centres were published in July 1969, except those at a particular centre. The tabulators at that centre reported that the percentage of marks and of successful candidates was unusually high (80% or more). The matter was referred to tile Unfair Means Committee of the Board. A comparison of the answer books at that centre showed such a remarkable agreement in the answers, that it was obvious that unfair means were adopted and that the students had assistance from an outside source. The Chairman passed an order on August 30, 1969, cancelling the examination at the centre and allowing the examinees at the centre to reappear at the Supplementary Examination in September The action of the Chairman was placed before the Board and was- approved. The respondents, who were the examinees at that centre, moved the High Court under Art. 226 and the High Court quashed the order of" the Board and ordered publication of the results of that centre., In appeal to this Court, HELD:(1) There was enough material for the Chairman and the Board for taking action without any' complaint from anybody of the Use of unfair means. [966 E-F] (2) There was no reason for withholding the publication of results, of other centres which were not under suspension. [966 F] (3) Under s. 9(3) of the Bihar School Examination Board Act. in an emergency, the powers of the Chairman are co-terminus with those of the Board and be can take action himself and later report it to the Board. Therefore, the order of the Chairman in the present case was not incompetent. [966 C-F; 967 A] (4) The essence of an examination is that the worth of every is appraised without any assistance from an outside source. If at a centre the whole body of students received assistance and managed to source success at a high percentage, when at other centres, the average was only 50%, the University or the Board could cancel the examination as a whole; and if there was -sufficient material on which it could be demonstrated that the Authority was right in its conclusion that the examination as a whole was vitiated then academic standards require that the Authority's appreciation of the -problem must be respected. To make such a decision depend upon a full-fledged judicial inquiry would hold up the functioning of such autonomous bodies as Universities and School Boards. [967 G-H; 968 E-H] 964 In the present case, no principle of natural justice was violated and there was no need to give the examinees an opportunity to contest the conclusion, because, the evidence was plain and transparent, and the Board had not charged- anyone with unfair means so that he could claim to defend himself. Therefore, the order of the High Court must be set aside and the respondents-candidates allowed to sit for the next examination. 1969 B-D] Board of High School Intermediate Examination, U.P. Allahabad v. Ghanshyam Das Gupta and Ors. [1962] Supp. 3 S.C.R. 36, explained.. JUDGMENT:
CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION : Civil Appeal No. 2620 of
1969.
Appeal by special leave from the judgment and order dated
December 8, 1969 of the Patna High Court in C.W.J.C. No.
1040 of 1969.
Sarjoo Prasad, Roy Paras Nath, S. K. Bisaria and S. S.
Jahar, for the appellant.
S. N. Prasad, for the,respondents.
The Judgment of the Court was delivered by
Hidayatullah, C.J., This is an appeal against the judgment
and order of the High Court of Patna, December 8, 1969 in
Civil Writ Jurisdiction Case No. 1040 of 1969. It is
brought to this Court by special leave. The appellant is
the Bihar School Examination Board through its Chairman.
The respondents are 36 students of S.S.H.E. school,
Jagdishpur and H. E. School Malaur, District Shahabad. They
had moved the High Court under Art. 226 of the Constitution
against the order of the Board cancelling annual Secondary
School Examination of 1969 in relation to Hanswadih centre
in Shalibad District. They had also asked that a mandamus
be issued to the Board to publish the results of the
students who appeared at this centre. The High Court has
quashed the order of cancellation and directed the Board to
publish the results.
Candidates at the Secondary School Examination held in
March, 1969 appeared at various centres including Hanswadih
Centre. The results were published in July 1969 but the
results of examinees at Hanswadih centre were not released.
On July 22, 1969 it was reported in a local Hindi daily
newspaper that the results of this centre and others were
under consideration. On August 30, 1969 a communique from
the Board appeared in the newspaper Searchlight that the
examinations of all subjects held at the Secondary School
Examination of. 1969 at Hanswadih centre were cancelled and
the reason was that unfair means were practiced on a large
scale at this Centre. Examinees were, however, allowed to
appear at the supplementary Secondary School Examination to
be held in September, 1969.
96 5
The respondents challenged the order of the Board on many
grounds. The main grounds were that there was no complaint
of use of unfair means; that no opportunity had been given
to the examinees to show cause before passing the order of
cancellation against them; that as the Supplementary
Examination was to be held within 10 days of the communique
there was no time for the students to prepare for the
examination; that the cancellation ought to have been
announced before, publishing the results of other centres
and lastly that the order passed by the Chairman and not by
the Board, was not a valid order under the Bihar School
Examination Board Regulations.
From the record of the case and the return which has been
filed by the Board the following facts appear
The Tabulators of the Hanswadih centres’ reported that the
percentage of successful examinees was as high as 80%
whereas the average at the Arrah, Dalippur centres was only
50%. They were therefore asked to prepare percentage
subject wise. All the Tabulators submitted these
precentages. The matter was referred to the Unfair Means
Committee of the Board. The Committee in its turn asked the
Moderators to look into all the answer books where the
percentage was 80% or more. They reported unfair means on a
mass scale. The Chairman then passed an order on August 30,
1969 cancelling the examination in all subjects at the
Hanswadih Centre allowing the examinees to reappear at the
Supplementary Examination in September, 1969 without payment
of fresh fees. The Head Masters of the three schools
concerned were also informed by registered letters. The
action of the Chairman was placed before the Board at its
meeting on September 9, 1969 and was approved. It was
stated in the return that a complaint was received from one
Satnarain Singh of Jagdishpur, who, however, wrote a letter
that he had made no such complaint.
The High Court gave a finding that the high percentages did
give rise to a suspicion that unfair means were practised
and that the Board was justified in investigating the case.
It was, however, held that the examinees were not given a
chance to show cause and the materials on which the Chairman
of the Board passed his order were not disclosed to the
examinees. The Board had therefore failed to act according
to the principles of natural justice and the order of the
Chairman and/or the Board could not, therefore, be
sustained. The High Court relied upon Board of High School
& Intermediate Education, U.P., Allahabad v. Ghanshyam Das
Gupta and others(1) and Ajit Singh and others v. Ranchi
University(2). It commented upon the short interval bet-
(1) [1962] Supp. 3 S.C R. 36.
(2) A.I.R. 1964 Patna 291.
96 6
ween the communique and the Supplementary Examination and
held that the communique should have been issued before the
results had been published. The High Court also considered
the competence of the Chairman to pass the order under the
Regulations but did not decide it as it reached the
conclusion that the principles of natural justice were
violated and the orders of the Chairman and/or the Board
were, therefore unsustainable. The order of the Board was
quashed and the publication of the results of the Hanswadih
Centre was ordered. This Court granted special leave and
directed stay of the operation of the order of the High
Court.
We heard this appeal on February 25, 1970. Since the next
examination at which the respondents can appear is scheduled
to be held in March, we did not wish to delay the decision
of the appeal. We accordingly passed an order allowing the
appeal and set aside the order of the High Court but stated
that we would give our detailed reasons later. We now
proceed to do so.
All the arguments which were presented in the High Court
were repeated before us by the learned counsel for the
respondents We find it convenient to consider some of them
before taking up the point on which the High Court has
cancelled the order of the Board and directed the
publication of the results.
The argument that no one had complained about the exami
nation need not detain us. The Tabulators sent their
remarks oil which investigation was made. The Unfair Means
Committee and the Moderators gave their opinion. These were
sufficient for taking action. There was no need to wait for
a complaint, not was a complaint really necessary. The
results were withheld so that inquiries could be completed.’
In the meantime the results of the other centres which were
not under suspicion could be declared because in their case
there was no reason to withhold publication.
The contention that the Board alone and not the Chairman
could, cancel the examinations need not detain us. Under S.
6(2) of the Bihar School Examinations Board Act, the Board
considers, moderates, determines and publishes the results
of examinations. It also admits candidates to examinations,
disqualifies them for any reason which it considers to be
adequate. Under -s. 9(3) of the Act in an emergency the
powers of the Chairman are co-terminus with those of the
Board and he can take action himself and later report it to
the Board. In this case action was taken by the Chairman
and he reported it to the Board which fully endorsed it.
Therefore the cancellation of the examina-
967
tions at Hanswadih Centre must be treated as an order of the
Board and cannot, therefore, be challenged on the ground
that it was incompetently made.
This brings us to the crux of the problem. The High Court
interfered on the ground that natural justice and fair play
were not observed in this case. This was repeated to us by
the respondents in the appeal. A mention of fair play does
not come very well from the respondents who were grossly
guilty of breach of fair play themselves at the
examinations. Apart from the reports of the experts, the
results speak for themselves. At the other centres the
average of successful candidates was 50%. At this centre
the examinations had the following percentage
1. Mother Indian Language94
2. English70
3. Social Studies95
4. Everyday Science90
5. Elementary Mathematics100
6. Economics & Civics92
7. Elementary Physiology and Hygiene96
8. Geography….99
9. History88
10. Physics70
11. Chemistry100
12. Advance Mathematics99
13. Sanskrit100
These figures speak for themselves. However, to satisfy
ourselves we ordered that some answer books be brought for
our inspection and many such were produced. A comparison of
the answer books showed such a remarkable agreement in the
answers that no doubt was left in our minds that the
students had assistance from an- outside source. Therefore
the conclusion that unfair means were…adopted stands
completely vindicated.
This is not a case of any particular individual who is being
charged with adoption of unfair means but of the conduct of
all the examinees or at least a vast majority of them -at a
particular centre. If it is not a question of charging any
one individually with unfair means but to condemn the
examination as ineffective for the purpose it was held, must
the Board give an opportunity to all the candidates to
represent their cases ? We think not. It was not necessary
for the Board to give an opportunity to the candidates if
the examinations as a whole were being cancelled. The Board
had not charged any one with unfair means so that he could
claim to defend himself. The examination
9 68
was vitiated by adoption of unfair means on a mass scale.
In these circumstances it would be wrong to insist that the
Board must hold a detailed inquiry into the matter and
examine each individual case to satisfy itself which of the
candidates had not adopted unfair means. The examination as
a whole had to go.
Reliance was placed upon Ghanshyam Das Gupta’s case(1), to
which we referred earlier. There the examination results of
three candidates were cancelled, and this Court held that
they should have received an opportunity of explaining their
conduct. It was also said that even, if the inquiry
involved a large number of persons, the Committee should
frame proper regulations for the conduct of such inquiries
but not deny the opportunity. We do not think that that
case has any application. Surely it was not intended that
where the examination as a whole was vitiated, say by
leakage of papers or by destruction of some of the answer
books or by discovery of unfair means practised on a vast
scale that an inquiry would be made giving a, chance to
every. one appearing at that examination to have his say?
What the Court intended to lay down was that if any
particular person was to be proceeded against, he must have
a proper chance to defend himself and this did not obviate
the necessity of giving an opportunity even though the
number of persons proceeded against was large. The Court
was then not considering the right of an examining body to
cancel its own examination when it was satisfied that the
examination was not properly conducted or that in the
conduct of the examination the majority of the examinees had
not conducted themselves as they should have. To make such
decisions depend upon a full-fledged judicial inquiry would
hold up the functioning of such autonomous bodies as
Universities and School Board. While we do not wish to
whittle down the requirements of natural justice and fair
play in cases where such requirement may be said to arise,
we do not want that this Court should be understood as
having, stated that an inquiry with a right to
representation must always precede in every case, however
different. The universities are responsible for their
standards and the conduct of examinations. The. essence of
the examinations is that the worth of every person is
appraised without any assistance from an outside source. If
at a centre the whole body of students receive assistance
and manage to secure success in the neighbourhood of 100%
when others at other centres are successful only at an
average of 50%, it is obvious that the university or the
Board must do something in the matter. It cannot hold a
detailed quasi-judicial inquiry with a right to its alumni
to plead and lead evidence etc. before the results are
withheld or the examinations cancelled. If
[1] [1962] Supp. 3SC.R. 36.
969
there is sufficient material on which it can be demonstrated
that the university was right in its conclusion that the
examinations ought to be cancelled then academic standards
require that the university’s appreciation of the problem
must be respected. It would not do for the Court to say
that he should have examined all the candidates or even
their representatives with – a view to ascertaining whether
they had received assistance or not. To do this would
encourage indiscipline if not also perjury.
We are satisfied that no principle of natural justice was
violated in this case. The Board through its Chairman and
later itself reached the right conclusion that the
examinations at this Centre had been vitiated by practising
unfair means on a mass scale and the Board-had every right
to cancel the examination and order that a fresh examination
be held. There was no need to give the examinees an
opportunity of contesting this conclusion because the
evidence in the case was perfectly plain and transparent.
We therefore set aside the order of the High Court and
ordered dismissal of the writ petition but made no order as
to costs.
V.P.S. Appeal allowed. 97 0